Mark Del Franco - Face Off

They startled at a barrage of gunfire from the park across the street. A line of Legacy fighters was pushing toward them. Bullets whistled through the air, ricocheting off the front of the Guildhouse. Genda peered around the side of the Stryker. “Oh, damn, we’ve cut it too close. Keep your cell phone on so I can update you as necessary.” She backpedaled away from the truck. “Good luck! By the way, cute boots, Mariel. You’ll have to tell me where you got them when you get back. Okay, boys, time to get inside.”

Her bodyguards fired back up the street as Genda trotted behind them back around the corner. Laura jumped into the Stryker as Sinclair helped Whiting in behind her. The truck pulled out as Sinclair closed the door and moved to the front of the vehicle. He sat and looked at Laura. “Is that woman crazy?”

Laura smirked. “A little, but very efficient. Do you think you can deactivate the pod, Mr. Whiting?”

He shifted on his cramped perch. “That’s the one thing I’m sure of. I built in a shutdown.”

“Convenient,” said Sinclair.

Puzzled, Whiting cocked his head. “No, it isn’t. I’m a scientist. The pod is too experimental not to have a built-in fail-safe. That would be a foolish risk.”

Sinclair grinned. “As opposed to, say, getting hit with a hellfire missile.”

“What do you need me to do, Professor?” Laura asked.

“I’ll need you to talk to her, persuade her that everything is all right. She’s going to be very afraid. Once she’s calm, I’ll put her into a sleep trance, and this will be over,” he said.

Laura leaned forward. “I’m not going into a fire zone unarmed. I’d like a weapon, please.”

“Make that two,” said Sinclair.

A soldier handed two rifles down the line. “We were told you were cleared for these.”

Sinclair whistled as he took one. The rifle weighed almost eight pounds, with an infrared scope mounted on the top rail. “An Mk-16? Can I keep it?”

“No,” Laura said. She pocketed an extra magazine of ammunition. She didn’t like guns. Guns were meant to produce blood at a minimum, death as a matter of course. She almost never carried one, but under the circumstances, she knew it would be foolish not to. Without being able to tap essence, she was limited to her body’s own reserves, and once that was gone, it was gone.

An explosion rocked the truck. Tense silence swept through the back of the truck as everyone became quiet. Two soldiers returned fire through the top port. The longer they drove, the more the Stryker rang with the bullet impacts. Nothing pierced the armoring, but that didn’t lower anyone’s anxiety. They bounced as the Stryker jumped a curb, then skidded on a soft surface. They had arrived on the Mall.

Another explosion jolted the truck, and it lurched to a stop. The six soldiers around them readied to disembark. The vehicle commander ordered a smoke grenade launched. Someone hit the rear door, and the soldiers jumped out with their weapons primed. Laura slid to the rear, the air filled with gunfire and smoke. They were a lot closer than she had imagined they’d be, barely fifty yards away. She craned her neck out, but the smoke limited her field of vision. Somewhere above, she heard the rotor-blade whir of the Blackhawk.

Soldiers lay on the ground nearby, firing at the main entrance to the Monument. Theirs wasn’t the only team. She hadn’t expected that, but now she realized taking the Monument with six men wasn’t a likely scenario. People ran back and forth through the smoke. Screams reached her ears as the sound of gunfire dissipated.

“We’re inside. Still meeting resistance,” the vehicle commander called out.

“Why aren’t we out there?” Sinclair asked.

Laura kept her eyes on the entrance. “We’re here to protect Whiting and get Cress. It’s not a war-game exercise.”

Sinclair squeezed in next to her to see out. “Yeah, except I’m trained for this.”

She glanced at him, impatient. “Good. You can mop up anything these guys miss. Now, pay attention.”

“We’ve got a go. Make it fast,” the commander shouted.

Laura popped the door. She and Sinclair hit the ground together and helped Whiting. Aircraft filled the sky, fighter jets and helicopters circling in the distance. A wall of helicopters hung in front of the White House. A staccato burst of gunfire flared across the Ellipse in front of the mansion.

Above, the smoke curled away to reveal the deep black underbelly of a Blackhawk. The helicopter veered to one side and turned. Another smoke grenade launched from the Stryker. “Get moving! We have incoming,” the vehicle commander shouted.

They scrambled down the sidewalk, dodging among debris and bodies. A sense of nothingness shimmered over them, a wave in the air with no essence, but they stumbled on. The Monument burned with neon purple light, Cress’s body signature permeating the white stone surface. Near the peak, a rainbow slurry of essence revolved as the giant obelisk sucked it in.

A soldier appeared at the main entrance and waved them in. “We’ve found no one that matches the description of Adam DeWinter,” he said.

Laura surveyed the lobby; chipped masonry and dead bodies were scattered about the floor. “DeWinter’s not here. There’s no way out. He isn’t the suicidal type.”

“Ma’am, I believe what you are looking for is back here,” said the soldier. He led them across the damaged space to the elevators. In a narrow alcove to one side, two long rods of white crystal stretched from one wall to the other. Resting on top, a dark gray lozenge-shaped tube of quartz burned with a deep violet essence.

“Ah, now I see what they wanted those rods for,” Whiting said.

They spread out in a loose arc at the foot of the pod. “What do they do?” Sinclair asked.

Whiting grimaced as he ran his hand over one. “They’re conduits, tapping into the granite of the structure. It’s how Cress is accessing the essence in the Monument stones.”

“Can we disconnect them?” Laura asked.

He leaned over the head of the pod. “They’re not important now. Getting Cress out of here is.”

Outside the main doors, an explosion lit the night sky, followed by the roar of tearing metal. Another explosion erupted, a blinding orange light flashing into the lobby. Laura’s cell phone chirped. She found a text message from Genda signed with a smiley face. “They took out the Blackhawk.”

Whiting stepped over one of the support rods and leaned over the pod. The air throbbed against Laura’s face. Blood pounded in her ears. Until it was missing, she had never noticed how much ambient essence kept her energized. “Why isn’t the pod draining our body signatures?”

Whiting crouched to examine the underside of the pod. “The system is designed to facilitate and amplify Cress’s abilities. It absorbs local essence but needs to be in direct contact with body signatures to absorb those.”

“So we’re safe as long as we don’t touch that thing?” Sinclair asked.

Whiting hummed to himself. “Yes. Unfortunately, we need to touch it to stop it.” He tapped at a strip of red stone embedded on the top of the pod and grimaced. “This is the control ward. It’s not responding. Too much interference from the selenite in the pod itself, I think.”

Laura stepped over one of the support rods. “What are you saying? You can’t stop it?”

Without touching it, Whiting pointed to the red stone. “This ward stone is suppressing Cress’s consciousness. It allows DeWinter to direct her abilities and control his fighters. I keyed a deactivation response to my body signature, but the selenite is draining it off before it can penetrate.”

Sinclair lifted his rifle and brought the butt down hard on the red stone. A piece chipped off. He hit it again. A crack formed. He hit it again. And again, until the impact broke the ward crosswise. Whiting grunted in approval. “That works, too.”